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23990 results in Ancient history

Page 320 of 1200

  • 4 - Straddling Borderlines: Divine Connotations in Funerary Commemoration

  • Barbara E. Borg, University of Exeter
  • Book:
    Roman Tombs and the Art of Commemoration
    Published online:
    01 April 2019
    Print publication:
    18 April 2019, pp 191-290

  • Summary

    This chapter explores the meaning of portraits that assimilate their subjects to divinities and of tombs in the shape of proper podium temples. Both have been linked to 'private apotheosis', yet with little reflection on what this may mean. I first discuss a range of different possible readings of portraits on divine bodies and their rhetorical equivalents, including, significantly, as expressions of a genuine belief in the divinity of humans and their capacity to depict tutelary deities. Temple tombs were inspired by and modelled on temples for the imperial divi and divae and the Templum Gentis Flaviae. They alluded to posthumous apotheosis, which could be conceptualized in several ways, from belief in the divinity and immortality of the soul to apotheosis modelled on deified emperors. Both types of divine associations had the potential of sitting on the borderline between different - and differently ambitious - interpretations, which ensured their attraction and suitability for various contexts and audiences. Since the world beyond was envisaged as a mirror image of social relationships and hierarchies on earth, they were also a means of extending status claims into eternity.

  • 2 - Reviving Tradition in Hadrianic Rome: From Incineration to Inhumation

  • Barbara E. Borg, University of Exeter
  • Book:
    Roman Tombs and the Art of Commemoration
    Published online:
    01 April 2019
    Print publication:
    18 April 2019, pp 77-122

  • Summary

    This chapter offers a fresh look at, and a new interpretation of, the change from incineration to inhumation in the second century CE. Recent scholarship has either given up on the issue or reduced it to a change of fashion. Yet why did it become a ‘fashion’ to inhume the dead? I first look at evidence for inhumation over the course of the first centuries BCE and CE and demonstrate that inhumation never went out of use entirely in elite circles and had already become increasingly popular during the later first and early second century CE, owing to the fact that inhumation was considered to be an old Roman practice linked to the kings and some of the most respected Roman gentes. Reviewing literary and material evidence for imperial burial and deification ceremonies, I then argue that Hadrian played an instrumental part in changing the emperors’ form of burial, thus also promoting inhumation in Roman society more widely. In contrast to previous suggestions, I argue that it was not his philhellenism that instigated the change, but his desire to join a growing elite minority in linking himself to Roman tradition.

  • 3 - Family Matters: The Long Life of Roman Tombs

  • Barbara E. Borg, University of Exeter
  • Book:
    Roman Tombs and the Art of Commemoration
    Published online:
    01 April 2019
    Print publication:
    18 April 2019, pp 123-190

  • Summary

    This chapter takes issue with the popular view that, in the imperial period, multigenerational families had been replaced by the nuclear family as the primary reference point in funerary contexts; that each generation established its own tomb; and that this reflects a decline of the family clan and growing individualism in Roman society more generally. I argue that this misconception is based on flaws in the methodology applied. Tombs were most frequently founded as multigenerational mausolea that gained in significance with every new user generation. In elite families, the idea of the gentilicial family clan lived on into late antiquity with mausolea constituting a prime location for celebrating the longevity and dignity of a family. Many freedmen shared this idea, though they had to adapt it to their means and circumstances. While affection and pietas towards kin sometimes took precedence over concern for the family name, the preservation of the name was essential for many. Lacking legal ancestry and often also offspring, freedmen heirs secured the survival of a name and, in return, the tomb’s founder became their ‘ancestor’, a concept that was remarkably successful with some tombs remaining in the family name for up to 100 years.

Page 320 of 1200